on paper

i forget that it was ever a swan

so the past collapses behind me in a pile of paper rubble. no thicker than a sheet. the ephemera of my life amounts to no more than scraps. and the way that is happened, when i look back on it, what i see is a piece of origami paper unfolded. i forget that it was ever a swan. once i saw the force behind my life as a cootie catcher and under each wing a new fate, if i could just shuffle the arms right. red, blue, yellow, green. pick a number one through eight. here is the life you were always promised, the one you wanted. now i can see every destiny was in fact the same destiny. they were all written on the same page.